Otherwise, there’s not much that charms in RE’s nine pages of wretched writing, worse reasoning, and hysteria. In fact, the thing is so farcical that bloggers speculated it might be a parody. Then Michelle Malkin confirmed that our rulers did indeed waste our taxes on this tripe. Too bad: were government efficient, DHS would simply swipe MIAC’s report rather than compiling its own. Not only does MIAC shelter under DHS’s umbrella as one of its 58 fusion centers, “The Modern Militia Movement” is currently going to waste since the public’s outrage forced its retraction.

Both MIAC and DHS vilify Americans who dissent from Big Brother – all Americans who dissent in any way, from those who disagree so profoundly they’re hoarding food and planning escape to those merely grousing about high taxes. Unless you goose-step in lockstep with the Feds on every issue, all the time, MIAC implies that you are a “domestic terrorist” and DHS actually calls you one. The latter warns “federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials” against patriots who deplore the evisceration of the Second Amendment specifically and the Constitution in general, the murder of unborn children, State-sanctioned sodomy, or the president’s fascism. (The report disingenuously chalks that last bit up to racism: we’re not fuming over Obama’s abominations, but over the “historical [sic] election of an African American president.” So, if an election held just six months ago is “historical,” does that make its campaign last summer prehistoric and Obama Tyrannosaurus Rex?)

Tellingly, DHS fears Americans who appreciate firearms enough to “stockpile,” i.e., buy, them. And though governments at the state and federal levels usually redefine “militia” to mean the State-supported, State-suborned National Guard, both DHS and MIAC get it right: they use the word correctly, referring to us, the people at large, to Americans who buy their own weapons rather than borrow guns – as well as the uniforms and obedience that go with them – from government. Naturally, neither agency sees the militia as a good thing. They understand as did the Founding Fathers that armed people are free people who can burst the chains the Feds are forging.

DHS goes MIAC one better, though, by impugning the military as well as the militia. Yes! Feds who float the American Empire on the blood of other people’s children repay their victims by hyperventilating that “returning veterans” may be “disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” Seems the sociopaths who disdain us as cannon fodder have finally realized that’s a double-edged sword: soldiers trained to shoot Iraqis can site on American rulers just as easily.

And that’s wracking official nerves. For decades, the Feds have defied the Constitution to impose their whims on us, sacrificing our good to theirs, starving us so they can feast. Whether government taxes us to fund the entitlements that buy politicians re-election or virtually strip-searches us at airports to make work for the 45,000 screeners of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it protects its interests, not ours. That’s why elected leeches also rob us to pay the Secret Service: they don’t dare tempt our wrath by strutting in public without hired guns.

That wrath sent Missouri’s politicians scuttling away from MIAC’s nonsense. But the Feds are made of sterner stuff. More distant and so more insulated from us than local officials, the Feds bail out their corporate cronies despite our vehement opposition, then insult us chumps who pay for it as “terrorists.” So we shouldn’t be surprised that a spokesman for Tyrannosaurus bloviated and bribed: "The President is focused not on [this report] but rather taking the steps necessary to protect all Americans from the threat of violence and terrorism regardless of its origins” – oh, right: including Americans who declined to pay taxes a few days ago? Or those who buy and sell drugs the DEA doesn’t like? – “… and he will continue to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and benefits they have earned."

Also standing staunchly behind the report is DHS’s Secretary, Janet Napolitano. She’s a prime example of the arrogance that explodes when local politicians blast into the Federal stratosphere. Before her stint with DHS, Napolitano was governor of Arizona – a state so opposed to a national ID card that its legislature passed and she signed a law prohibiting compliance with REAL ID. Now, as a DC dictator, she supports this unfunded mandate though a whopping 29 states are rebelling against it. Don’t hold your breath expecting her to recant DHS’s report.

But that’s all to the best if it teaches our fellow “terrorists” a lesson. Many of them cheered when the Bush Administration demonized Muslims and then expanded the meaning of “terrorist” to include all who opposed its totalitarianism. Now that Democrats extend the term in exactly the same way to their opponents, neonconservatives may suddenly realize why the Constitution never authorizes government to revise the dictionary – or to create bureaucracies that label and monitor citizens.

Meanwhile, the aphorism about those who live in glass houses springs to mind: what rich irony for an Administration that’s slaughtering folks daily to call us “terrorists”! But even actual terrorists can’t begin to compete with government’s mayhem. The US State Department estimates that terrorists worldwide killed roughly 18,000 people each year from 2004-2007 (other sources report much lower averages for other years). Contrast that with the 50-70 million fatalities during the six years of World War II, or the more recent and relatively bloodless invasion of Iraq, with its 1.3 million deaths since 2003. Yet our rulers pretend that terrorists are the greater evil.

Proverbs 28:1 says the wicked flee when no man pursues. That pretty much explains the panic from MIAC and DHS. You and I are no threat; violence is the State’s hallmark, not ours. But, hey, don’t tell them that. And by all means, continue “stockpiling” guns and ammunition. Now that we’ve got these tyrants on the run, let’s keep ‘em there!

Read more on the DHS report at The New American magazine.

Becky Akers, an expert on the American Revolution, writes frequently about issues related to security and privacy. Her articles and columns have been published by Lewrockwell.com, The Freeman, Military History Magazine, American History Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, and other publications.